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This week it’s the (what was thought to have been) pioneering stem cell research of RIKEN’s Dr. Haruko Obokata & friends coming under serious scrutiny that could lead to disavowal, and a recounting of the much more enjoyable tale of how SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son got Steve Jobs to give him iPhone exclusivity in Japan.

This week it’s Sony flirting with yet another game of catch-up, Panasonic is taking their smartphone game to India, and tiny cracks have been found in some of the wings Mitsubishi Heavy Industries makes for the 787 Dreamliner, which is not a game at all.

This week it’s Sony's, Hitachi's, and Toshiba's once-failing, leftover screen-making divisions coagulated into an actual business ready for IPO, Canon reminds us that it's not all DSLRs and gigantic copiers, and Rakuten, one of Japan's only standout international tech players, throws down cash for Viber!

This week it’s all about exchange and overview - from Pakistan to Japan to Iowa to the world - we’ve got students from the Middle East visiting Japan to learn about tech, educators from Japan visiting Iowa to learn about STEM (no, really), and a global survey of Millennials’ perceived levels of innovativeness!

This week the world is realizing that Japan’s high-speed trains are pretty much what everyone should be doing and maybe let’s all just go ahead and do as they do, Nissan’s autonomous cars just might debut in California before Japan, and the many things we can learn just by torturing Japanese leeches with cold!

This week Japan’s running into some sticky situations with its Turkish nuclear tech dealings (saw that coming), Japan's Sony was pretty awesome at CES, but another nation’s tech overshadowed all that, and Nintendo, despite selling a whole lotta gear in 2013, is still in some hot, red water.

This week, well, they say dancing around screaming “I TOLD YOU SO!” isn’t very polite, but we will because SCHAFT Robotics' co-founder publicly declared J-startup culture moribund and is building his own investment fund, Nintendo pwned some patent trolls, and maybe, just maybe, SONY LIVES!